Here is the language of people who have no intention of solving a problem: 

Enduring Excuses 

1. “These things are very complicated, and we are trying to get our hands around the issue,” 
2. “We are just starting to study the issue, and have not gotten very far.”  

Accountability Requires Action  
I have heard coworkers, peers and supervisors report these statements to our bosses for three to six year periods of time.  I also have solved the problems they were referring to and similar problems. Since my organizations overcame them, I have wondered when our bosses were going to say, 

“Well, if one organization can overcome these issues, why can’t yours?”  
OR 
“Consult with the leaders of the program that have overcome those issues, and come back with a report detailing the steps you will put in place to improve your organization’s performance.”

Without a demand for action, people will continue to get paid for not making progress in solving problems.  

The Smoke Screen 

I wonder what it is that makes leaders accept these smoke screens. Perhaps some leaders never have identified the mission they are paid to oversee, so they meander through the fog, not seeing clearly enough to even know where the organization is to ask intelligent questions that could compel positive direction.   

Demystifying Complexities 

The Three-Dimensional Leader: Negotiating Your Mission, Resources and Context, says, “Great leadership brings structure where ambiguity exists by providing straightforward and simplified approaches to explaining the various elements within a context that can seem so daunting.  While it may make us feel important to [say] our jobs are complicated, difficult, and tough, great leadership demystifies complexities to provide simple, actionable direction so complexities are handled in bite-size, actionable chunks.”  Thus, Albert Einstein negotiated very complicated information by simplifying it to E=MC2.  

“Even during times of economic downturns, products that provide innovations that meet customers’ changing needs will prevail in the marketplace.  Innovation keeps companies relevant to consumers.”  So says The Three-Dimensional Leader: Negotiating Your Mission, Resources and Context, which also lays out four ingredients to bring out a team’s creative potential.  

Innovation requires 1) conception, 2) coordination 3) synergy from diversity, and 4) getting the customer’s view.  

Conception: 

No one thinks out of the box apart from imagination. Imagination envisions how to make the theoretical practical. It sees what others don’t and organizes structure out of ambiguity.  It’s the foundation for connecting the dots to accomplish innovation. 

Coordination: 

Desirable leadership models and gets teams to communicate, cooperate, and coordinate. This triple-c synergy is necessary for openly sharing ideas and piggy backing off those most useful to the current project.  Organizations obtain synergy when all communicate, cooperate, and coordinate.

Cooperative Synergy:

Synergy is achieved when the coordinated output of the parts is greater than their mathematical sum, so 1 + 3 = 6. Synergy means that one leader and three followers who operate in sync will accomplish the work of six people who work individually in an uncoordinated way.  Synergy requires synthesizing various perspectives and viewpoints. 

The Customer’s View:

The reason teams innovate is to arrive at the next generation of products and service-delivery that customers value and will choose.  

One-dimensional leaders are preoccupied with power, and stifle creativity by heavy handedly imposing their limited views.  I-D’s never let you do what they don’t know.  2-D’s don’t embrace innovation because they fail to see its relevance within the context. 3-D’s facilitate people to achieve innovation that customers value.  Your creative team may be working for you now, but you must lead them three-dimensionally.

The Three-Dimensional Leader explains the mission of negotiation is to reach an agreed upon mutually beneficial course of action using the resources of all the parties involved.  The opportunity for negotiation occurs when two or more parties have missions that converge in such a way that requires their agreement, cooperation and participation to be successful. 

To negotiate is to interact with others to reach agreed-upon courses of action. Negotiation is not manipulation. It is bargaining, consulting, and discussing to reach settlements where mutual, collective advantage or outcomes occur that satisfy the various interests represented.  The goal of negotiation is to keep the compatible agendas and missions moving forward in a win-win manner, while ensuring they do not collide.    

Negotiation is a continuous process that parties must engage and reengage in as their contexts change. A change in context or circumstances require renegotiation to adjust to variables to arrive at or maintain the circumstances that facilitate mutual organizational mission fulfillment. 

One-dimensional leaders will negotiate to make deals that only work for themselves, or their personal agenda, and not the other parties.  Two-dimensional leaders set up “us vs. them” dynamics to divide and separate negotiating parties in order to pursue a side agenda that is not acknowledged to all parties.  Three-dimensional leaders focus on negotiating to secure achieving the missions that matter most to the success of all the partnering parties.  Three-dimensional leaders focus on making deals that are fair both ways (or more).   

Once you determine that two or more parties have missions to fulfill that require their mutual cooperation, it is essential to deploy people with a three-dimensional mindset to negotiate the agreements that make mutual participation successful.  This gives each party the best opportunity to arrive at the negotiation nexus.